Is the hardware requirement the real barrier to local AI adoption, not the software?

Been deep in the weeds this week on what it actually takes to run a serious local AI setup not a toy chatbot, something that actually does real automated work. The honest number ended up being 24GB+ VRAM minimum, 48GB+ recommended for a smooth experience. That's not "install an app," that's "own real hardware."

Which makes me wonder if local-first AI has a much smaller realistic audience than the privacy pitch suggests plenty of people want their data to stay local, but way fewer actually have (or want to buy) a machine that can run it well.

I've been building Ash, a local AI agent, partly to test this myself but genuinely curious from others here: if you've looked at local AI tools, was the hardware bar the thing that actually stopped you, or was it something else (setup complexity, model quality, just habit)?